Welcome to the MIXOPEAT whiteboard !
MIXOPEAT is a research project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) interested in the role of mixotrophic protists in peatland carbon cycle.
MIXOPEAT is currently recruiting scholars to join the project at University of Toulouse (France), in the Functional Ecology and Environment lab (look here for details). If you are interested in graduate (Master internship) and postdoctoral opportunities, please contact Vincent Jassey.
Spotlights on the whiteboard
December 2022
Our last paper is out in New Phytologist and it is open-access! https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/EJDKCDSUS4JHGHRU6GXC?target=10.1111/nph.18601
Plants produce a wide diversity of metabolites. Yet, our understanding of how shifts in plant metabolites as a response to climate change feedback on ecosystem processes remains scarce. Here, we test to what extent climate warming shifts the seasonality of metabolites produced by Sphagnum mosses, and what are the consequences of these shifts for peatland C uptake. We used a reciprocal transplant experiment along a climate gradient in Europe to simulate climate change. We evaluated the responses of primary and secondary metabolites in five Sphagnum species and related their responses to gross ecosystem productivity (GEP). When transplanted to a warmer climate, Sphagnum species showed consistent responses to warming, with an upregulation of either their primary or secondary metabolite according to seasons. Moreover, these shifts were correlated to changes in GEP, especially in spring and autumn. Our results indicate that the Sphagnum metabolome is very plastic and sensitive to warming. We also show that warming-induced changes in the seasonality of Sphagnum metabolites have consequences on peatland GEP. Our findings demonstrate the capacity for plant metabolic plasticity to impact ecosystem C processes and reveal a further mechanism through which Sphagnum could shape peatland responses to climate change.
Juin 2022
Anna Sytiuk successfully defended her PhD on the role of metabolites in Sphagnum ecology! Congratulations Dr Sytiuk! The Mixopeat team is proud of you!
Mai 2022 (2)
The award season is definitively open! Vincent successfully defended his ‘Habilitation à Diriger la Recherche’, the last degree delivered by French Universities. Congratulations Vincent! Who’s next? 😉
Mai 2022 (1)
Samuel successfully defended his Ph.D thesis on the importance of photoautotrophs in peatland C uptake. Congratulations Dr. Hamard and good luck in your next journey! The Mixopeat team is very proud!
You can have a glimpse on Samuel’s work in the #Mixoblog!
February 2022
Our last publication in New Phytologist is out! We show that soil algae are important contributors of C cycle and fix ~3.6 Pg C per year! More info here.
January 2022
Happy new Year 2022!
The new Episode of the serials ‘Dans les coulisses du climat’ about our work on peatlands is out! We had tons of fun making this movie with Unverscience!
October 2021
@HamardSamy published his new paper in Environmental microbiology!
July 2021 (2)
@HamardSamy wrote a #Mixoblog about his last publication in Journal of Ecology.
July 2021
Anna Sytiuk and Samuel Hamard published their new paper too!
Watch out our #Mixoblog for more information about these two papers very soon!
June 2021
Janna Barel has a new paper out! Check our #Mixoblog for more information about the main results.
January (2)
Janna Barel submitted the fifth paper related to the project within 2 months! The Mixopeat Post-doc and PhDs are on fire!
MAPP (MApping the contribution of Phototrophic microbes to the global carbon cycle of Peatlands), a new project funded by EC2CO CNRS INSU to Vincent Jassey and strongly related to Mixopeat. More info soon about it!
January 2021 (1)
A new paper related to the project is out!
Rewiring of peatland plant-microbe networks outpaces species turnover
Interactions between plant and microbial communities in peatlands are pivotal for the functioning of the ecosystem, in particularly for the carbon cycling. Here we have assessed interactions between plant and microbial communities along an environmental gradient using co-occurrence modeling. We show that enviro-climatic drivers caused a rewiring of plant-microbe interactions resulting from novel plant-microbe associations. We concluded from that research that increased temperature and nutrient deposition weakened linkages between plant and microorganisms, which may aggravate the overall robustness of peatland ecosystem to future environmental changes.
Robroek, B. J. M., Martí, M., Svensson, B. H., Dumont, M. G., Veraart, A. J., & Jassey, V. E. J. (2021). Rewiring of peatland plant–microbe networks outpaces species turnover. Oikos, 303, 605–15. http://doi.org/10.1111/oik.07635
September 2020
A nice post has been published on the BES Palaeoecology Special Interest Group. This post focused on the paper published in Royal Society Biology Letters by Mariusz Lamentowicz and Vincent Jassey from Mixopeat.
More info here: https://palaeosigbes.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/palaeoecological-clues-hiding-in-polish-peatlands-could-be-key-to-helping-conservationists-plan-for-climate-change/
February 2020
Short field work session in the Pyrenees to collect litter for our microcosm experiment with Vincent Moulia (master student), Janna Barel and Camille Defrenne, a visiting post-doc from ORNL, US. Was a productive day!
January 2020
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Santa brought a wonderful addition to the team Mixopeat in Toulouse. Janna Barel just started her postdoctoral research with us. She will focus on microbial food web modeling. More here!
October 2019
EOS journal published a synthesis about our last paper in Global Change Biology!
September 2019 (3)
Our last paper in Global Change biology (http://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14788) hits the headlines in french medias 😀
https://www.liberation.fr/france/2019/10/01/les-tourbieres-nous-aident-a-pieger-le-co2-meme-en-cas-de-secheresse_1754716
https://www.la-croix.com/Sciences-et-ethique/Sciences-et-ethique/tourbieres-resister-rechauffement-climatique-2019-09-24-1201049597
https://www.boursorama.com/bourse/actualites/les-tourbieres-une-reponse-pour-limiter-les-effets-du-rechauffement-a8a25ccd57f00ab102012560e474e964
https://www.challenges.fr/monde/les-tourbieres-une-reponse-pour-limiter-les-effets-du-rechauffement_674479
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/130919/les-tourbieres-une-reponse-pour-limiter-les-effets-du-rechauffement?onglet=full
September 2019 (2)
Sphagnum community can maintain its productivity despite warming and droughts. Species specific photosynthetic compensation explains weak or absent effects of
Find more about in: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14788#.XXdLaqUuKn0.twitter…
September 2019
Sphagnum metabolites govern microbial communities in peatlands! Check out our new paper connected to Mixopeat.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.02042/full
June 2019
UPDATE: Post-Doc found! More news soon!
We are looking for a 2-years young post-doc (start in September 2019) to work on microbial food web structures and modeling. See further here: https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/UMR5245-VINJAS-001/Default.aspx?lang=EN
April 2019
April has been an incredible month for Mixopeat!
Vincent Jassey published the first paper related to Mixopeat with Mariusz Lamentowicz in Biology Letters. More details can be find here.
Anna Sytiuk, Samuel Hamard and Vincent Jassey successfully started the field season in Kusowo Bagno bog (Poland). Unfortunately, they discovered the wild boar effect on an experiment.. Four plots were destroyed and the cables of the weather station eaten!
Anna Sytiuk, Samuel Hamard and Vincent Jassey participated to the Ecoveg 14 conference in Toulouse and presented the first results related to the project.
October 2018 (2)
We installed the meteo station in the Polish site. It was wet and epic!
October 2018 (1)
Welcome to Anna Sytiuk, a new PhD student on the project! She will be supervised by Régis Céréghino and Vincent Jassey and will focus on vegetation aspects.
August 2018
Vincent Jassey presented his former results and the aims of Mixopeat at the ISPR conference on microbial photosynthesis in Vancouver (Canada).
July 2018
We completed field work! We transplanted peat-monoliths in boxes in the five peatlands in Europe. Some pictures of our trip can be seen on The Wall!
20th June 2018
We started field work! This summer we will do the peat-monolith transplantation across five peatlands in Europe. We collected peat-monoliths in the French Pyrénnées and are almost ready to take the road and do the other sites.
28th May 2018
We visited the beautiful Kusowo bog in Poland! We selected the location for our field experiment we will install very soon! We will use nice patches of Sphagnum magellanicum to build our mesocosms.
3nd May 2018
We did field work today with Samuel! We visited the site in the Pyrénnées (Counozouls) and saw the stone of Counozouls!
2nd May 2018
Today Samuel Hamard officially joined the project! He will first work as an engineer and help us to set-up the field experiment and then he will be the first Mixopeat PhD student in November 2018! Welcome Samuel!
8th March 2018
Sphagnum are slowly but surely growing for the lab experiment!
18th January 2018
We did the kick off meeting of the project in Toulouse last January. We had great times and discussions about the project. We started to plan the field experiment we will set up this summer.